A man shows off an induction cooktop at a cookware store amid rising demand due to LPG shortages. File | Photo credit: PTI
E-commerce platforms have seen rising demand for induction cooktops amid the crisis in West Asia, leading to public fears of LPG supply disruption. While the prices of the cooktops have gone up, stocks have remained available on e-commerce platforms in many cities, at least as of Wednesday (March 11, 2026).
While a small minority of Indian households use induction cooktops, only 5% of households had “electric penetration” in their kitchens, Milind Deore, secretary of the Energy Efficiency Authority, said in a discussion held in 2024.
The product segment is competitive online with products selling for less than half their sticker price. On Amazon, Pigeon’s 1,800-watt cooktop was selling for ₹1,499, ₹100 more than its price last week and more than its price in the past three months.
However, this price is still less than half of the maximum retail price of this particular model. Other models on Amazon, which only provides 90 days of price history, have seen similar trends. The Cadlec 2,000 watt hob is also selling for ₹1,499, but its earlier price was ₹300 less. A similar price increase occurred for the iBELL Castor cooktop.
Receiving friction
There are pain points with electric cooktops. While the demand for electric and induction cooktops may be unprecedented, adoption may be limited in most households. “We did a household survey of 910 households in the low to middle income group,” said Rudrodip Majumdar, assistant professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at the 2024 Modern Energy Cooking Forum (MECF) in New Delhi.
“Many of these households really lacked (electrical) carrying capacity in the kitchen. About 13% of households did not have a 5-amp plug, 64% of households had only one 15-amp plug, and 47% of households did not have any 15-20-amp plug, which is actually a necessary part of electrical appliances,” he pointed out.
Even with a hypothetical demand aggregation program that cuts prices for individual buyers by 50%, Mr Majumdar said an electric cooking setup could be too expensive for most households.
A lost opportunity
Lack of comprehensive policy support for electric cooktops would expose Indians to international oil price fluctuations, warned four speakers at the International Institute for Sustainable Development in 2024. LPG growth “exposes Indian consumers (who already face a price barrier) to international oil price fluctuations,” the researchers said in a presentation.
In the survey, the researchers said that most of the urban households that switched to “e-cooking” did so as a “backup” or because they were young professionals moving to a new place and facing LPG connection problems.
The key problem the researchers identified was that cooking on an induction hob with a single heating unit takes a long time and double units are “currently very expensive and have a total rated output of more than 3 kWh”. Dual units cost more than ₹8,000 at the time of research.
Published – 11 March 2026 23:22 IST
